Thinking about being a postal worker

Even more articles about women and the recession over the past few weeks. Rebecca Traister on Salon has an excellent piece on the role of the recession in reshaping traditional gender roles: “As the economy has soured, so has our stomach for stories about gains women have made in recent years. Now we long for comfortably numb, soothingly regressive versions of sex difference, a death throe of a wealth and gender structure that began to crumble before the economy did.”

And a terribly disturbing cover story on Forbes next week: “Terminated: Why the Women of Wall Street Are Disappearing”: "For years, as the economy boomed, the financial industry was a place of seemingly limitless opportunity for women. It offered high-paying jobs and untold possibilities for advancement. [Now]…none of the leading Wall Street banks--Goldman Sachs, the combined Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley--has a single woman in any of the top three jobs.
With the layoffs, "you have taken out a whole generation of future female managing directors," says Lisa Conley, 42, the sole female director in the health care group, who was also let go in November."

So where are women doing better than men? The New York Times had a fantastic interactive graphic earlier this week detailing the wage gap by occupation: “Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller?” Looks like the jobs that women are being “overpaid” compared to their male counterparts are postal service clerks and special education teachers. Another bright spot: Only one out of 89 women is behind bars or monitored, compared to one out of 18 men.

Still looking for that silver lining....